


Lost Time

by BethKerring



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Brotherly Love, But mostly fluff, Family Feels, Fluff, Ford Pines is a Good Brother, Gen, Humor, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Gravity Falls, Proceed with caution, Some angst, Stan Pines is a Good Brother, half of these characters don't even speak, it's really just Stan and Ford, kind of, this may rot your teeth out, with some Dipper and Mabel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24735364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethKerring/pseuds/BethKerring
Summary: Ford has missed over forty birthdays with his brother, and there's nothing he can do to get them back. But he can still make their first birthday back together as meaningful as possible.If he can figure out how.(Or, Ford does his best to be a good brother. Shenanigans ensue.)
Relationships: Ford Pines & Stan Pines
Comments: 35
Kudos: 205





	Lost Time

**Author's Note:**

> My second entry for [thestanbro's Stan Twins event](https://thestanbros.tumblr.com/post/619115995791015936/yes-indeed-folks-another-stan-twins-event-is), for Week 2: Birthday! Technically a day late, but I wanted to post it on their actual birthday. Plus, this turned out way longer than expected and I only finished editing this morning. XD
> 
> Warning for very minor swearing and a single brief reference to physical child abuse (and general vague references to Filbrick Pines being a jerk). In case it isn't clear, this takes place in early-mid June 2013, when everyone has returned to Gravity Falls for the summer.

“You know, the kids are planning a surprise party.”

It’s the first thing Stan has said in at least twenty minutes, which is probably some kind of record since they’re in the same room. Before the past year, Ford wouldn’t have believed Stan was capable of not speaking for even a minute at a time when there was someone around and something potentially offensive to say to them.

There were a lot of things he thought about his brother before the past year, and Ford doesn’t want to count them.

He looks up from his latest journal entry—this one an actual chronicle of the past day instead of an account of some new supernatural creature—and finds Stan sitting on the bed across the room, sorting through some old photos they dug out of the attic yesterday. Well. _Looking_ through them. Ford doubts he’s doing any kind of actual sorting.

His brain finally catches up with his ears, and he realizes what Stan just asked. His mouth twitches into a smile.

“You noticed, too, then?”

Stan raises an eyebrow. “I _have_ eyes, Poindexter. And ears. They’re not exactly bein’ subtle. And even if they were, you really think those kids would let the day pass by without some sort of big crazy party?”

Ford chuckles and shakes his head, his eyes fond. “No, I suppose not.”

Stan looks back down to the photos.

“Soos and Melody are in on it, too. And Wendy,” he adds after a minute.

This makes Ford pause. He blinks a few times and scrunches his eyebrows.

“They are?”

Stan, of course, just shrugs.

“Eh, not really a surprise either. Soos has been trying to figure out when my birthday is since he was twelve. I’m just surprised we didn’t hear him screaming when the kids told him they finally got it out of me.”

Ford has only had the pleasure of witnessing a couple of Soos’s high-pitched shrieks so far, but he still laughs. Stan scowls, and he laughs harder still.

It’s the same dynamic they’ve shared for going on a year now, but here, back on land, in the house where everything changed for the better, it feels more warm and comfortable than ever.

He always assumed they would all go back to Gravity Falls in the summer, but that didn’t change his or Stan’s cheering over video call when the kids officially said they were coming, too. And though Ford can’t think of anything he would rather do than sail the world with his brother, it’s … nice to be back on land for a while, in the closest thing to a solid, ground-based home he’s had since he was a teenager.

It’s strange, sleeping without the rocking of the boat or the rush of the waves, but he’s slept in just about every conceivable scenario, and he adjusted within four days. Of course, it helps that Stan is still less than ten feet away, snoring loud enough to wake the dead—and loud enough to assure an unconscious Ford that everything is alright.

The shack doesn’t have enough bedrooms for all of them, especially since Soos’s grandmother and Melody have both moved in, but thankfully Soos left most of Ford’s secret rooms alone, and it only took Ford a few hours to convert one of them—specifically, the one that used to be a shrine to Bill—into a bedroom, complete with two twin beds the local mattress store was kind enough to donate when they heard the town savior was coming back to visit.

The attic room has been left empty, and by unanimous agreement, that belongs to the kids.

It’s so little like the house Ford lived in thirty years ago that he almost doesn’t recognize it, but now that fact is a comfort instead of an annoyance. This house never really felt like a home then. More like … a home base. A lab that also had a bed in it. He was proud of it, yes, but more proud of what it stood for than anything else.

Now it’s loud and messy and alive, with glitter and snacks and mismatched socks instead of notes and experiments strewn over the floor, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

Not that it’s his anymore. Stan officially gave the deed to Soos before they set out to sea last fall, and even though Stan has been forging his signature for decades, Ford still signed it himself. Just to be sure it would stay legal once they get Stan officially resurrected.

Stan insists he’s happy staying legally dead for the rest of his life, but frankly, crossing borders has been a nightmare.

Even as Stan goes back to the photos, smiling and chuckling at a few of them, Ford finds himself staring at the floor, pulled down into his thoughts. No, it isn’t a surprise that the kids are planning a party for them, and it isn’t even that much of a surprise that Soos, Melody and Wendy are joining in. It’s exactly the sort of thing that the kids would do, and though Ford doesn’t know the other three nearly as well, he’s been making an effort in the week since they arrived, and he can easily see why they’ve earned firm places in Stan’s heart. Especially Soos. Ford really should have been kinder to him last summer.

There are … a lot of things he should have done.

And that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it?

Everything he should have done. Everything he hasn’t done.

All the decades of time lost.

And the date that’s coming up in less than a week now. The date Ford hasn’t forgotten, of course he hasn’t _forgotten,_ but which hasn’t really struck him until right now.

This will be the first birthday they’ve celebrated together in over forty years.

And no matter how much they’ve talked over their respective regrets, no matter how many times Ford has apologized, his chest still twists at the thought.

Maybe that lost time isn’t completely his fault, but he had a significant part to play. Maybe he couldn’t have stopped their dad from throwing Stan about, but … he could have reached out to help him. He could have asked their mom how he was doing, where he was. He could have done _anything_ to try to mend the relationship with the man who had been his best friend.

Ten years of birthdays missed because of his own stubbornness.

The guilt doesn’t bite as badly as it once did, but the bite is still there. At this point, it probably always will be. But now, it’s only more of a reason to spur himself into action. He’s missed forty birthdays, but there’s nothing he can do about that.

What he _can_ do is make sure that this birthday, and the ones to come, make up for all the lost time.

Yes. He can do that. He can definitely do that.

He just … has no idea how.

He hasn’t even _been_ to a birthday party, of any sort, in almost forty years—and the last one was only because Mom insisted, even though it was only the two of them around to celebrate with a small cake at the dinner table. He was nineteen then. What kind of birthday party do you throw for your twin when you’re both turning _fifty-nine_? He’s sure the kids will put together something usually better suited for someone much younger, and neither of them will mind one bit, but that’s because they’re _children_ —and because they’re Dipper and Mabel, and anything they do will be perfect. Ford doesn’t have that excuse, and he has to do this right.

Mabel will take care of the decorations, without a doubt, with the others to assist, and Stan would hardly appreciate such a thing coming from Ford. He’s already getting him a present, though maybe he should get a second. What else do birthday parties have? He knew some kids growing up whose parents could afford huge celebrations in expensive venues, but again, that’s more suited toward actual children.

Cake?

Yes. Cake is still normal. People can have cake at their birthdays no matter how old they are. He’s sure that the kids will make food, probably even a cake, but … there’s no harm in having a second. Stan has certainly never been shy about eating junk food.

Ford looks across the room at Stan, still engrossed in the photos, and nods to himself.

A cake. He can do that.

After everything his brother has gone through on his behalf … baking a cake is the least he can do.

*

It’s only after Ford has dug out a recipe from a library-borrowed cookbook and gathered all the ingredients that he remembers that he has never baked anything in his life.

Fiddleford baked sometimes, when he lived here, but Ford never did anything but eat what he made, despite numerous offers to teach him. Ford has never been much one for cooking in general, and even though he had to learn basic skills for his own survival in the multiverse, baking … wasn’t exactly essential. Everything he learned about baking, he picked up from Mom, and only when he happened to be in the kitchen when she was making something. He vaguely remembers wanting to learn when he was very young, but he’s sure his dad shut that idea down before it got too far.

Sometimes he wonders how many useful skills he could have picked up if his dad hadn’t considered them “unmanly.”

It can’t be _that_ difficult, though. He heard once that baking is a lot like chemistry. A science. He can work with that. He has a PhD in chemistry, even if it _was_ from a dimension where there were … slightly different base elements. The same principles should apply. Probably. Well, perhaps not, but he’s had to reference chemistry data quite a lot over the past year, especially when analyzing samples they’ve taken at sea, and really, how complicated could baking chemistry be?

He just needs the correct ingredients mixed together in the correct quantities at the correct time. Simple. Logical. Scientific.

He can do this.

Stan always loved double chocolate cake growing up. The more chocolate the better, he always said, and there were several similar recipes in the book he found. He was tempted to call Mom to see if she still remembered her old recipe, but her memory is … shaky nowadays, and she always gets so upset when she can’t remember something from their childhood. He doesn’t want to put her through that—as well as remind her that her sons are having another birthday that she isn’t well enough to attend.

They’ve already visited her twice, and plan to again later this summer, but … it isn’t quite the same. So a similar recipe will have to do. Hopefully Stan won’t mind the difference.

There really is a lot of chocolate in this recipe, though. Even for Stan’s taste. Especially now that he sees it laid out in front of him.

Should he modify it? Include less chocolate? Or is that just his own tendency to try to make things a healthier? This is a celebration dessert, not a balanced meal.

No. Just follow the recipe and it will be fine.

He has the ingredients, now he just needs the tools. Mixing bowl, that’s easy to find. Wooden spoon and plastic spatula? Tucked away in a drawer, much more neatly organized than anything was when he lived here. Electric mixer, electric mixer … yes, there it is, right in a side cabinet.

He twists it around in his hands, eying the yellow stain on the side that looks a little _too_ familiar to be a coincidence. This … can’t be the same electric mixer that Fiddleford used. He brought it from home, and it was old even back _then._ But no, Ford definitely knows that stain … and the little crack near the beaters … how is this thing even holding together? Did Stan use it at all over the past thirty ye—

No. No, of course he didn’t. Stan doesn’t bake either.

But certainly one of the house’s new residents does. Soos’s grandmother is out right now, so he can’t ask her whether she uses this one or has her own that she keeps somewhere else. And he isn’t about to go rooting through her room. She seems like a very sweet woman, and that would be rude.

He also doesn’t want to find out whether she would stay sweet if he violated her privacy.

Mixing everything with the spoon isn’t terribly hard. Like he thought, it’s just like chemistry, and he’s very good at correct measurements—you have to be when working with volatile materials. He’s … more than a little nervous when he turns on the mixer, but by some miracle, it doesn’t start smoking or explode, and he’s able to blend the cake batter to a smooth consistency with no major incidents—except for some splattering on his face. He sets the mixer to the side, stirs in the extra chocolate chips, and pours the batter into a pan.

Then he looks back to the recipe and stops.

He … doesn’t know how to work an oven.

That probably should have crossed his mind before now. Especially when “preheat the oven to 400 degrees” was the first step. That he apparently skipped.

Right.

He’s never _needed_ to use one, of course, never having baked, and ovens weren’t exactly widely available when he was trekking through the multiverse anyway. And the recipe, unfortunately, doesn’t provide instructions. Because apparently every aspiring chef should already know how to use an oven.

Except him.

He looks down at the pan, gritting his teeth and furrowing his brow.

It’s just heat, right? Heat applied in a specific amount for a specific amount of time. It’s just chemistry. Baking is chemistry. And he’s had to make substitutions in chemical reactions before. He’s managed that. He can manage this.

He lifts his watch and searches for the setting he installed that generates a variable amount of heat and applies it to whatever he wants. Extremely useful when he wasn’t able to build a fire to cook something he hunted or gathered, as well as getting Stan and himself out of that ice cave after a random avalanche trapped them in.

He knows how to use the stove, and that applies heat from underneath, so all he needs to do is apply the same heat from the other sides. Relatively evenly. It might not turn out _quite_ the same as it would in an oven, but … it’ll be close enough. Probably.

He sets the baking pan up as best he can, adjusting the temperature on the stove until it registers as 400 Fahrenheit by his watch. Then he switches the watch to apply heat and turns it on. It takes maybe thirty seconds to heat up—one of the optimizations he’s most proud of—before he starts moving it around the top and sides of the pan.

Within a minute, the batter begins to shift, the chemical reactions of the heat with the flour and sugar and milk and eggs and … everything else. He smiles, just a little, in an odd satisfaction. It’s far from the most advanced thing he’s done, but it’s also far out of his usual range of expertise,. He’s almost proud.

That lasts for approximately thirty seconds.

Then his smile falls.

Are … cakes supposed to be cooking this fast? The recipe said twenty minutes, but …

Is that bubbling normal? There’s a lot of it. No, it must be normal. All the temperatures are correct. Though … he’s never used his watch like this before. Or the stove. Or both of them combined. And he’s never done much study on heat distribution when combining his watch with another heat source … or how any of the ingredients used in a cake react to it. Or how it reacts with a metal cake pan.

The bubbling is getting stronger.

And stronger.

Ford blinks. His eyebrows shoot up.

And half a second later, the cake explodes.

He jerks back, stumbling but catching himself at the last moment. His eyes squeeze shut, like he learned to do in his early college days to avoid blinding himself with toxic chemicals every time he forgot to put on safety goggles.

But there are no toxic chemicals, of course. Nothing burns his eyes or his skin. The explosion ends as quickly as it began, and Ford blinks his eyes open and reaches up to wipe the brown goop off his glasses.

Only to find the same brown goop splattered over the entire kitchen.

The baking pan still sitting on the stove, a few bits of overcooked cake stuck to the sides.

Footsteps pound on the floor as someone runs through the house, but Ford doesn’t turn. Seconds later, Stan’s huffing breaths stop a couple of steps behind him.

“Ford! You oka—”

The word cuts off so cleanly that Ford swears it’s been cut with a knife. By the time he turns around, Stan is standing in the doorway, eyes blown almost comically wide, mouth hanging open, gaze flicking around the goop splattered over the walls, ceiling, counters, floor … and Ford, of course.

After maybe ten seconds, his jaw tightens in a wince, and he scans Ford up and down.

“Yeesh,” he mutters. His eyebrows twitch. “Please tell me that’s not poisonous.”

Ford bites back the enormous sigh threatening to burst from his throat. “It’s cake batter.”

Stan’s lips curl up at the corners.

“So only maybe poisonous? Since I guess you made it.”

Ford is too tired for a full-hearted glare, but he manages a half-hearted one. Stan laughs and reaches to pat his shoulder, but stops when he can’t find a place that isn’t covered in batter.

“I’m messing with you, Poindexter,” he says, flashing a more genuine smile before the smirk returns. He glances around one more time. “Gotta say, though, didn’t realize you’d bring your lab explosions to the kitchen. Glad you didn’t try this on the Stan O’War.”

Ford doesn’t even have it in him to glare again. He just sighs, worn out and disappointed. Of course it wasn’t this easy. Nothing is ever this easy. And he’s always had the most trouble with things other people find simple.

Stan looks him over one more time, sniffs, and raises an eyebrow.

“What kind is it, anyway?”

Ford wipes a little more batter off his glasses. “Double chocolate. Or … that was the intention.”

Stan sniffs again, a little deeper than before.

“Well, it smells like chocolate, so you got that part right.”

Ford’s mouth twitches—not really a smile, but close enough for the moment.

“Do you want the batter?” he asks, gesturing toward the mixing bowl on the counter, which he never cleaned out after he dumped the rest in the baking pan. “There’s still some left that didn’t get on … everything.”

Stan blinks. “Huh?”

Ford blinks back. “Isn’t double chocolate your favorite?”

“Eh?” Stan gives him a weird look before something like realization flashes in his eyes. “Oh, nah, I grew outta that years ago. Got tired of it, I guess.”

He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. Like it’s something everyone should know—or at least nothing important enough to share over the past year.

Of course not. They’ve tried desserts from all over the world, but the only time they’ve had cake was at the twins’ birthday party.

“Oh,” Ford manages, and it almost sounds normal.

Yes. _Oh._

“Mabel’d love it, though,” Stan goes on. He smiles, and manages to find a small chocolate-free spot on Ford’s back to pat. “Wait ’til she gets back from that ‘girls’ day out’ thing with Melody and Wendy and give it to her. Hell, leave the mess and she’ll probably lick the walls.”

He laughs at his own joke, and Ford does his best to smile. Stan turns around and walks out of the kitchen before he can see it fall.

*

Ford gives up on the cake.

Honestly, it wasn’t a very good idea in the first place. Even if he had any baking experience whatsoever, Mabel is definitely going to outdo him—and apparently Soos has become quite the avid cook since his girlfriend moved in. And even after living with her only briefly before he left with Stan, Ford remembers just how talented a chef his grandmother is. He wouldn’t be surprised if the three of them manage to make a dessert that will blow all of them out of the park.

He would just be embarrassing himself.

He already has.

There are other things he can do. Things he would be better at, things that won’t lead to him making a fool of himself and a mess of the house.

A gift. He should focus on a gift.

Another gift, of course. One gift really doesn’t feel like enough, and the one he has is … more than a little sentimental, and part of him is afraid it will kill the mood of the party anyway. Maybe he should give Stan something more upbeat at the party and save his other gift for later.

He just needs to think of something.

Quickly.

What does Stan want that they don’t already have? If he really wanted something when they went into a store before, he usually either bought it for himself or Ford bought it for him. It can’t be anything big—not if they want to take it on the boat. They never got each other anything that expensive as kids, simply because they never had enough pocket money for much. It was the experience that counted back then: playing games together or working on the Stan O’War.

But they already have experiences, and Ford can’t think of anything he can offer, except for new, interesting destinations once they set out again in the fall. So what else could he—

Then the memory flashes into his head like a brick flying toward his face.

He’s sitting in the living room at the time, in the chair that is apparently still just as much Stan’s now as it was when he actually lived here. It felt wrong sitting here at first, but Stan insisted that as long as he isn’t in the room, he’s welcome to it.

If he _is_ in the room, get the hell out of my chair, Ford.

The TV isn’t on, but he’s been staring at it for the past few minutes, lost in thought, and apparently some part of his subconscious sees that TV and hands him the memory. Or, rather, throws it in his face like a brick.

_The Slightly Strange Adventures of Billy James._

He hasn’t thought of the name in at least twenty years. Probably thirty. Or forty. Or more. But there it is, sitting in his head like it’s always been there, just waiting for the right moment to come out.

 _The Slightly Strange Adventures of Billy James_. Stan’s favorite TV show.

Or … well. One of his favorites. He watched a lot of TV, when they got the chance, and he did tend to like a lot of different shows. But Ford remembers this one in particular. It was one of the rare things they didn’t watch together. Ford still remembers it, enough that he knows the title and a vague idea of what it was about, but he can’t think of anything substantial. He’s pretty sure he tuned it out while Stan was watching, having already decided that it wasn’t his sort of thing.

But Stan liked it. He watched it for years. Ford can’t remember when he stopped, but anything you watch for that long as a child has to mean _something_ to you.

That could work. Something he could watch in the quiet moments on the boat. Something to cheer him up when everything Ford tries has already failed.

The only problem is … Ford has no idea where to find it.

Or even where to start looking.

But if there’s one thing he’s learned about the modern world is that it never fails to surprise him. And there are two people who are far better at navigating it than he’ll probably ever be.

Mabel went out with Candy and Grenda earlier this morning, but as far as he knows, Dipper is still upstairs in the attic room, so Ford heads that way. The idea of asking his thirteen-year-old nephew for advice isn’t nearly as embarrassing as it once would have been. Dipper might be young, but in many ways, he’s already far wiser than Ford. Though usually those ways are “how to be a good brother” and “how to communicate your emotions,” they also include things about the twenty-first century that Ford hasn’t had the chance—or the patience—to learn.

The door is cracked open when he gets to it, so Ford pauses, listens, then opens it a little further. Indeed, there’s Dipper, sitting on the edge of the bed, writing in the pine tree journal on his lap. By the looks of it, he’s almost filled it up. Ford will have to get him a new one soon—maybe even before his birthday, if he fills it up before then. And he’ll definitely have to set up a time for them to go through any entries Dipper is willing to share.

He waits a moment, just basking in pride for his nephew, then clears his throat.

“Dipper?”

“Oh!” Dipper jolts so hard he almost falls off the bed, but catches himself—and his journal—at the last second. He blinks, then straightens himself, clearing his throat. “Hey, Great Uncle Ford. Didn’t, uh … see you there.”

Ford holds back a smile. Dipper has gotten over the worst of the hero worship he had last summer, but there’s still a touch left, and even though Ford doesn’t think of himself as much of a hero, he still feels just as honored.

Then he remembers why he’s up here, and the urge to smile turns into an urge to glance around the room.

“I … wanted to ask your help with something.”

Dipper blinks a couple of times. “Yeah, sure. What is it?”

Ford forces himself to meet his eyes.

“Do you know where I might be able to find an episode of an old television show?”

“Which one?” Dipper asks.

“ _The Slightly Strange Adventures of Billy James_.”

Dipper frowns, one eyebrow raised as his eyes flick to the ceiling, like he’s searching through his mental library—and come to think of it, he probably is.

“I … don’t know that one,” he says at last, and even though Ford knew the chances were slim, he can’t help but feel just a little disappointed. Not at Dipper, of course. Dipper is doing his best. But if the show doesn’t work out, then he doesn’t know— “But I can look it up!”

Ford blinks, and before he has the chance to open his mouth, Dipper is pulling his laptop out from under his bed and sitting back down with it on his knees.

“You can find almost anything on the internet nowadays,” he goes on as he starts to type, leaving Ford even more in the dust. “Here, let me search for the name …”

Ford tries to think of something to say, but all he can do is take a few steps closer, craning his neck to the side to try to get a look at what Dipper is doing. But before he can get a glimpse—he swears, before even _ten seconds_ have gone by—Dipper grins and points at his screen.

“Here we go! The first three episodes.”

He turns the laptop around to let Ford see the screen. And sure enough, there’s that video-sharing site—Zoo-Tube?—with what he thinks is called a playlist pulled up. _The Slightly Strange Adventures of Billy James, Ep 1-3._

“… Oh.”

He’s starting to accept that despite coming across far more advanced technology in countless other dimensions, he will never really understand the internet.

Stan doesn’t, and he’s been here the whole time.

“Do you want me to send you the link?”

Ford looks to Dipper, trying not to furrow his eyebrows too hard.

“Hm?” Link? Oh, right, he remembers that term. “Ah, yes, that would be very helpful. Thank you for finding it for me.”

Dipper just beams.

It takes Ford a minute to get the video pulled up on his own laptop, but he’s used “links” before—even if it’s been a while—and it doesn’t take him too long to figure it out. He watches the first few minutes, and yes, this is definitely the show that Stan used to watch. Ford … still can’t really figure out what the plot is. Or anything other than the main character, Billy James. It uses puppets instead of either animation or live human beings, and is … honestly a lot creepier than he remembers it being.

But Stan enjoyed it, and that’s what important. So now Ford just needs to figure out where to find the rest of the series.

Thankfully, though he hasn’t spent as much time on the parts of the internet that the kids are familiar with, he _has_ learned how to do basic research, and he’s fairly proficient at navigating the world of online shopping—even though shipping when you have no permanent address is a challenge. He has an address now, though, and plenty of money stashed in a joint bank account from the treasure they’ve managed to find over the past year. _The Slightly Strange Adventures of Billy James_ wasn’t the most popular show when it actually _was_ the 1960s, and it’s even less popular now, but Dipper is right: you can find almost anything on the internet nowadays.

Including the full DVD box set of every single episode of _The Slightly Strange Adventures of Billy James_.

Of course, it helps that the person who posted the first three episodes included a purchase link in the description.

It isn’t even that expensive, though getting it shipped here within three days is going to be … significantly more expensive. But he’s got plenty of money,. Stan is a master at getting things for free—even when he isn’t stealing—and frankly, Ford has been on the wrong side of the law for so long that he’s almost as good at finding a way not to pay when it’s not _too_ unethical. Even if they never find another bit of treasure in their lives, they could easily keep on sailing for another fifty years.

And a birthday present Stan will love is more than worth it.

But after the cake incident … maybe he shouldn’t be so presumptive. Yes, Stan loved this show, but Ford should at least find out whether he already owns it or whether a box set is even something he’d be excited about.

He finds Stan sitting on the porch, lounging around in the rocking chair that Soos’s grandmother must have put there at some point during the year. He looks … so much older sitting there, just looking out at the forest, a lot like Ford has caught him staring out at the sea. Stan used to hate those woods, from what Ford can tell. Too many bad memories. Too many supernatural things that threatened the people he loved.

But he also lived here for thirty years. He’s probably spent more time looking at those trees than Ford ever did.

Gravity Falls is becoming like home to Ford now, but it’s been Stan’s for much, much longer.

Ford clears his throat, and Stan looks up. No jumping. Not even a blink. He just smiles, fond and warm, and Ford can’t help but return it.

“I’ve got something to show you,” he says, holding up the laptop.

Stan raises an eyebrow, somewhere between curious and suspicious, and Ford doesn’t want to know what Stan is imagining. Though after the incident of sharing what he thought was a fascinating autopsy of a potentially supernatural creature, only to make Stan almost throw up …

Ford coughs, grabs another chair, and pulls it up next to Stan’s. He balances the laptop on his knees and tilts it so they can both see the screen, then starts the first video over from the beginning.

It takes maybe five seconds for both of Stan’s eyebrows to shoot up.

“Wait, is that …” He looks at Ford, mouth hanging open. Then back to the screen. Back to Ford. Back to the screen. Back to Ford. “How the hell did you find it?!”

Ford smiles. “The internet.”

Stan’s mouth snaps shut. He raises an eyebrow. Ford had no idea his brother could look quite so unimpressed.

“You mean the kids.”

Ford clears his throat.

“Dipper,” he mutters. “He found it.”

Stan gives him his most infuriating “I knew it” grin. Ford just crosses his arms, grumbles, and looks back to the screen.

Thankfully, Stan leaves him be and returns his attention to the video. Ford sneaks a glance at him, trying to read his reaction. He’s smiling, just a little, but … not the same kind of smile he wore when he was a kid. Or even the kind of smile he wears now when he’s watching old period dramas and thinks Ford isn’t looking.

Ford gives it a minute. Two minutes. But as hard as he tries, he can’t seem to let it drag on to three.

“So what do you think?” he asks, doing an absolutely terrible job at sounding casual.

Stan huffs a laugh and shakes his head, one eyebrow raised.

“I can’t believe I used to like this crap.”

Ford has almost forgotten how it felt for his heart to sink right into his gut.

“This was your favorite show,” he murmurs, and isn’t even sure if he’s talking to Stan or himself.

Stan laughs again, then pushes himself up from the rocking chair, cracking his back in the process.

“Heh, yeah, no kidding.” He looks to Ford, eyebrow raised a little further, then shrugs. “Honestly, I think I just watched this because you were too busy with your nerd books and I got bored. Y’know. The usual way you find stuff to watch on TV.”

He glances back at the screen, his smile a little fonder.

“Nostalgic, though.”

And then, without another word, he starts walking away, like Ford showed him a cat video instead of what was supposed to be his favorite show for years when he was a kid.

“Where are you going?” Ford asks, and doesn’t even care how pathetic he sounds.

Stan waves a hand without looking back.

“I got stuff to do. Busy day.”

“Busy day doing what?”

But Stan is already in the house, and Ford is sitting there on the porch, alone, in front of a laptop playing a ridiculous, slightly creepy kids’ show from the 1960s.

Without a birthday gift for his brother.

Wondering how anyone could have ever called him a genius when he feels like the most useless idiot to have ever been born.

*

He genuinely considers going out into the woods, finding a mostly-unoccupied spot, and screaming at the top of his lungs.

He still might do it later. Scream therapy really isn’t used as often as it should be, and it was very effective the last time he tried it. Then again, considering how friendly the kids have gotten with the supernatural residents of the woods, he isn’t sure he wants news of their great uncle shouting his head off getting back to them.

And in the meantime, he still needs a new plan, and he’s running very low on ideas.

That is, he only has one left.

It doesn’t come back to him until he’s rewatching some of the old film reels he pulled out last year when they were working on Stan’s memories. They never actually got through all of them—or, rather, they did, but fell asleep several times and missed quite a few moments. It’s rare for Ford to be genuinely surprised by a memory, but when this clip pops up, he sits up so fast it almost hurts his back.

He doesn’t even realize what it is at first. It’s not labeled, and it’s not exactly easy to identify. It’s him and Stan, of course, no older than eight or nine—because Ford is sure they never dressed identically after that age. They’re at the beach, close to the spot where they’d work on the Stan O’War in a few years. Mom is almost certainly behind the camera—their dad never bothered to film them unless it was something he deemed important—and their dad is, of course, nowhere to be seen.

But Shermie is.

It takes Ford an embarrassingly long few seconds to even recognize him as Shermie. He looks so … young. A lot like him and Stan as teenagers, really, but with a bit of Dipper and Mabel mixed in. The fact that he’s smiling and running around instead of standing off to the side, silent and lost in his thoughts, just makes it more difficult to tell it’s him.

And that’s when Ford realizes that he’s playing some kind of game.

With him and Stan.

And then the memory snaps into Ford’s head, like it was there all along.

They’d never played the game before, and never did after, but now Ford can picture it perfectly. It’s one of the best memories he has of Shermie. With him being so much older, they were never close, and Ford only spoke to him a couple of times after he went away to Backupsmore

But even if Shermie wasn’t the most present brother, he was never a bad one, and when he was around, he did his best in the … less than ideal environment he had been placed into. He taught them life lessons they would have otherwise learned much more harshly. He encouraged their games and dreams, even if he rarely joined in. And once or twice, he stepped in to defend them from their dad, taking a shouting or a beating so they had a chance to run off.

Ford really does need to call him more often.

The memory in particular that the films send back to him is their eighth birthday. Shermie was sixteen, already spending most of his time out of the house with friends, but he stuck around for their birthday party. Probably the last one he was actually present for.

The fact that their dad isn’t in the clip might be a clue to why.

But Shermie was there, and Mom was there, and they went to the beach, and without anything else to do, Shermie made up a game. The same game they’re currently running around playing in the video while Mom films. There’s no audio—they never got a camera that could record sound—but Ford swears he can still hear the three of them laughing.

It was fun. Ford doesn’t remember everything, but he remembers that.

Birthday games. That’s something people do, isn’t it?

They had fun with it then. It’s a little … childish for men their age, but probably not much more than whatever the kids will be putting together.

And it’s all he has left.

The rules are … a little difficult to pick out, and he’s pretty sure they changed a few times during the game itself, but the basic concept is easy enough to understand. It’s a bit like tag, but also a bit like hide-and-seek, and the person who’s “it” has to wear a blindfold, and at some point water balloons were introduced. Ford is pretty sure it didn’t _start_ with water balloons, and he’s just as sure that originally only the person who was “it” got to use them, but by the time the video ended, the game was still being played, and everyone involved was chucking water balloons at each other.

It doesn’t have a name, as far as he knows, but they’re the Pines family. They can get by.

Admittedly, Ford still feels a little stupid standing on the grass in front of the house and trying to figure out whether he’s got the game right—and debating whether it even matters, when Stan’s memory is probably just as fuzzy as his own. He doesn’t technically _need_ to be outside to think about this, but it helps him to imagine how they would play the game nowadays, as well as their chances of injuring themselves. There are a lot more obstacles here than there were on the beach, but the beach also had pieces of broken glass lying around, so …

“Great Uncle Ford?”

Ford doesn’t jump. He’s far too experienced in encountering people by surprise to jump at a child’s voice.

He just … freezes for a second, then turns around to face his great nephew, standing on the edge of the porch, watching him with a worried look.

Ford smiles and tries not to look too startled.

“Dipper, my boy!”

Dipper stares at him for a few seconds, then glances from side to side, like he expects to see something there.

“Are you … okay?” he asks. “You’ve been standing out here for fifteen minutes.”

“Dipper was watching you from the window,” Mabel adds, and Ford has no idea how she managed to step through the front door and get so close to her brother without him noticing, but there she is, juice box in hand and smile on her face.

Dipper stiffens. “I was n—”

He cuts himself off, apparently realizing that there’s no use arguing. He glares at his sister, hard, and Mabel just smiles and takes another sip from her juice box.

Then, in perfect synchrony, they turn back to him, and Ford is once again stuck with answering their question.

He clears his throat and glances off to the side.

“I was … trying to recreate a game your grandfather invented for Stan and me.”

Before he can decide whether that’s a suitable enough explanation, Mabel gasps hard enough to be concerning and breaks into a grin so wide it worries him even more.

“Ooooh! Can we play?”

Ford and Dipper both blink. But while Dipper just looks a little confused, Ford furrows his eyebrows and considers it. It takes a few seconds, but finally he smiles.

“Well … I don’t see why not. You can help me get a better idea of whether I’ve got it right.”

Hopefully.

Mabel squeals in delight, tosses her apparently-empty juice box toward the door, and hops off the porch, Dipper close behind her.

Explaining the game is even harder than he anticipates, but he manages it. He isn’t exactly sure how Mabel manages to run into the house and come back no more than two minutes later with at least ten water balloons, but he isn’t going to question it.

She insists on being the first one to be “it,” and no one argues, even though Ford and Dipper give each other alarmed glances. And indeed, a blindfolded Mabel chasing them around the yard with water balloons is … not the scariest thing Ford has faced in his life, but comes close to the top ten. She uses up all but one of the balloons within a minute and resorts to chasing them, shouting at the top of her lungs and somehow managing not to run into anything.

It’s weird, it’s exhausting, it’s slightly terrifying, and it really is exactly the sort of game a Pines would come up with for two eight-year-olds’ birthday party.

Stan walks onto the porch maybe five minutes into the game, holding a can of soda. It takes Ford a few seconds to stop running around, and the moment he does, Mabel’s last water balloon smacks him right in the side. Hardly the most painful thing he’s ever felt, but Mabel really has a strong arm when she cares to use it.

She keeps right on running around in circles, but Dipper stops at his other side, panting and not-so-subtly using him as a shield.

Stan looks at each of them in turn, one eyebrow raising further and further.

“Lemme guess,” he says at last, sipping his soda. “Trying to find even more creative ways to end up in the hospital?”

Mabel finally stops. She yanks the blindfold off and beams at him, her hair a mess and her clothes splattered with water, but still looking as happy as she ever has.

“I saw this game on one of the old reels,” Ford says, feeling just as silly saying it again. “Shermie made it up for us when we turned eight.”

Stan actually looks surprised.

“Huh. No kidding,” he mutters. “Didn’t think Shermie was still around much at that age.”

Ford purses his lips, but manages a smile.

“No … he wasn’t.”

The kids are both staring at him now, that old familiar concern that shouldn’t be theirs to bear. He’s never asked them what kind of relationship they have with their grandfather, but from the little they’ve said, they seem fond of him, if not particularly close. He sounds like he’s been good to them.

And really, Ford can hardly blame him for getting away from their household as soon as he could.

“You want to join in?” he asks Stan, reminding himself why he got into this game in the first place. He looks at Mabel and Dipper, both slightly drenched and still panting, but with smiles on their faces. “The kids are having fun.”

Stan snorts and waves his hand, and this time, when Ford’s heart drops to his feet, he barely even feels it.

“Nah, that looks like way too much running around for someone my age,” Stan says with a chuckle. He lifts his soda can in a mock toast. “Glad you kids are enjoying it, though. Hey, pull out that reel later, Ford, I wanna watch that one. Could always use more ammo to tell Shermie how old he’s looking.”

He’s walking away again. Of course he’s walking away. Walking away like this is nothing important. Just another silly moment for his family. Because in his mind, that’s all it is.

All of Ford’s effort. All his planning. All his ideas.

His _last_ idea.

If this is the universe’s idea of payback, then Ford knows he has no right to be mad.

“Grunkle Ford?” Mabel asks, and Ford wipes every last trace of disappointment from his face before he turns to face her. “Can we play another round?”

There’s something behind the question. Something … worried, and warm, like she once asked him if he could have hot chocolate with her over video chat and he realized halfway in that Stan had told her he was having a bad day.

Ford smiles, because he’s failing at this, and he has no idea what to do, but his niece is concerned about him, and he loves her too much for words.

“Of course, Mabel.”

Dipper groans, but when Ford looks to him, he sees a smile tugging at his mouth. He holds out his arms, shirt sleeves still dripping. “Can we _not_ use water balloons this time?”

Mabel puts a finger to her chin. “How about marshmallows?”

Ford doesn’t bother to ask whether they have marshmallows. Mabel has been here for almost two weeks now. Of course they have marshmallows.

It may not be the original rules of the game, but he thinks Shermie would like this version better anyway.

He smiles a little wider. “I don’t see why not.”

Mabel beams.

*

This isn’t working.

The fact that it took him this long to realize that fact is … probably not a positive comment on his intelligence. Or at least his common sense. But Ford has always been far too stubborn for his own good—even more stubborn than Stan at times—and this is just the latest example of it coming back to bite him.

Their birthday is tomorrow. And all he has is the same present that’s been sitting in the hidden compartment under his bed since the day they got here.

He’s supposed to make this birthday special. He’s supposed to do something that brings them together, that shows how much he loves his brother and how much he wants to make the rest of their years count.

But he doesn’t know how.

He doesn’t know how because … he doesn’t know his brother.

That’s not true, of course. Not completely. But there are so many things that seemed so self-evident in his head that just … aren’t true like he remembers them. Or, in some cases, were never true at all.

Stan isn’t a kid anymore.

That’s … obvious. It was obvious even when he hadn’t seen his brother in thirty years, and it’s especially obvious after spending months at sea together. They’re about to turn fifty-nine years old. Their childhood is far, far behind them.

Stan doesn’t like double chocolate cake anymore. He doesn’t care about the TV shows he used to watch religiously as a child—or apparently just as a distraction when Ford was reading. And though he can take down a giant squid with a left hook—and has done similar feats multiple times over the past year—he doesn’t really care for games that force him to run around.

This Stan may not be completely different, but he’s far more different than Ford realized.

It … doesn’t hurt like he expects it to. Not in the _ways_ he expects it to, at least. The reminder of how much time he’s lost will always hurt to some extent, no matter how much Stan forgives him, and no matter how many steps he makes toward forgiving himself. Forty years without his brother will always be forty years less they get to spend together, no matter how long they live.

But there’s a different sting there, not quite as strong, but still impossible to ignore. The realization that he doesn’t know his brother half as well as he thought he did, even after spending months upon months on a cramped boat with no one but each other for company. They’ve mended their bond, dealt with their mistakes, but none of that can make up for how much time they’ve spent apart.

And how many changes in the other they’ve missed.

But before Ford can drag himself too far down that rabbit role, he thinks back to those first few months on the Stan O’War, when video calls with the kids were almost daily and he and Stan were still working out the more challenging aspects of sharing a small space with someone they barely knew how to talk to. They didn’t exactly _fight_ a lot, but … there were awkward moments. Uncertain moments. A lot of silence and accidental offense and both of them having no idea how to handle so much unspoken conflict.

The hardest things to deal with, though, were Stan’s bad days. And bad moments. And just general _moods,_ when they didn’t have a specific cause that Ford could point out. He _knows_ his brother has issues, knew it then, but knowing the general concept and knowing how to deal with it are two entirely different things.

He didn’t know how to help Stan. He didn’t know what was wrong or how to make it better. He tried everything he could think of to cheer him up, to help him out of his low points, and sometimes it even worked. But not always. And in those moments when he couldn’t think of anything to do, when he knew Stan was in pain but had no idea why, he caught himself wondering whether there was any hope of him ever being the brother Stan deserved.

It took a little over a month before he finally gave in and called the kids.

Calling them without Stan overhearing was … a challenge, but he managed it, and couldn’t even hide his desperation when he asked for their advice. He hated seeing the worry on their faces, but still felt a twinge of relief when they looked to each other, stared for a few seconds in silent conversation, and nodded.

Then they gave exactly the same answer: if something was wrong, and he didn’t know what to do, he should ask Stan.

It sounded impossibly simple then, and still does now. Ford is used to complicated solutions to problems. He’s used to figuring things out himself, through observation and experimentation and a bit of … alright, a fair amount of guesswork. That’s how he’s gone through most of his life.

And look where that got him.

He knows right away that it’s the correct solution now, just like it was then, just like it ended up helping the two of them through more bad spots than he can count. But that doesn’t make that little voice in his head any easier to deal with. That voice that tells him he’s failing if he asks, that he’s supposed to just _know_ the answers to these questions. How could he have gone this entire time on a grand adventure with his brother and not know how to plan the perfect birthday for him?

But his pride, his desperation to believe that he _has_ to be right … that’s caused more problems for him and those he loves than he can count. And he’s not going to make that mistake again.

After all, the kids have already proven themselves to be far wiser in the ways of being a good sibling than he’ll ever be.

He spends around five minutes swallowing his pride and bracing himself before he heads down to the room that he and Stan have temporarily claimed as their own. The whole elevator ride, he taps his fingers on his legs and takes deep, slow breaths, reminding himself that he’s faced down some of the most terrifying beings in the multiverse, and that talking to his brother shouldn’t begin to compare.

And it doesn’t. It’s much worse.

The elevator dings, and he jumps. The doors slide open in the front of him, and it feels like he’s about to walk to his execution.

And there’s his executioner, flopped on his back on his bed, holding a book. Reading.

_Reading._

It’s almost funny how shocking it was the first time he saw his brother doing that.

Stan glances at him, lifts a hand in a wave, then returns to the book. He looks both young and old lying there, so much like Ford did as a teenager, though Stan is a much more casual reader than Ford ever was. He doesn’t race through books like he’s trying to break a world record. He just reads, quietly, for his own enjoyment, without any sort of internal or external pressure egging him on.

Ford hopes he can be a little more like that someday.

He steps out of the elevator before the doors can close on him, but then his feet stick to the floor, and all he can do is stand there, staring at Stan and trying not to fidget. He had a whole speech planned, he’s sure of it, but now it seems to have disappeared and left him hanging, his supposedly brilliant head useless and empty.

It takes maybe ten seconds for Stan to notice he’s being watched. He frowns, turns his head, and sets down the book to look at Ford more clearly, even though he’s still lying on his back. Ford opens his mouth, but finds it just as useless as his head. Stan sits up, frowning deeper. Ford swallows, gathers all his willpower, and drags the words out from the very depth of his being.

“I don’t know what to do.”

The room is silent. Ford knows they both must be breathing, but he doesn’t hear either of them. His mouth is clamped shut like he’s trying to make sure no other words come out, even though he really should have given far more explanation than that.

Finally, Stan pushes himself up a little straighter, legs hanging over the edge of the bed. One of his eyebrows rises.

“Huh. That’s a first.”

Ford blinks. His brain is slow to kick back into gear, but he still processes the words, and can’t stop his own eyebrows from scrunching up. Before he can say a word about it, Stan rolls one of his shoulders, apparently stiff from reading so long.

“Well, first time you admit it, anyway,” he says, a gleam in his eyes that tells Ford he knows _exactly_ what he’s doing. Ford frowns. Stan grins. “So what do you have no idea what to do about?”

There’s concern underneath the teasing, and Ford relaxes a little, even as part of him tenses right back up. This is his brother. This is just his brother. They’ve fought impossible monsters together, sailed the world, discovered new creatures, braved ocean storms, boring, repetitive meals, long nights of motorboat snoring, and their own decades-long issues.

This is Stanley.

The man who gave up thirty years of his life to bring him back from another dimension. Who forgave him for too many mistakes to count.

Ford takes a deep breath, lets it out, and takes another few steps into the room.

“Our birthday.”

Stan blinks. Something … shifts in his expression, but Ford can’t figure out what it is. He’s not really smiling or frowning. His expression is too complex to read.

Ford bites the inside of his lip and looks down at his feet.

“This is … this is the first birthday we’ve had together in forty years. More than that, and … I want to make it meaningful, but I don’t know …” He shakes his head, clenches his fists, then forces them to relax. “We’ve had almost a year together, but there’s still so much I don’t know. I don’t know what to do to make this birthday one you’ll enjoy. One that will … make up for lost time.”

His words hang in the air like a thick gas, not quite enough to choke him, but too much for him to breathe easy. He counts each second, counts his breaths, tries to count his heartbeats, even though all three are moving at different rates. One, two, three, four, five, six—

Someone snorts.

Ford lifts his head, just as Stan breaks down laughing.

For a few seconds, all Ford can do is stare at his brother all but cracking up at what he meant to be a genuine and heartfelt confession. Then something snaps, and he clenches his hands into fists, his teeth gritted and his eyebrows scrunched.

“Oh, come on, it’s not _that_ funny!”

Stan laughs even harder.

It takes another ten seconds for him to calm down, and by then, Ford is ready to storm out of the room and forget about celebrating their birthday entirely—even though he knows he wouldn’t actually do it. But before he can move, Stan pats the spot next to him on the bed, still chuckling, but no longer laughing so hard he can’t breathe.

“C’mere, you nerd,” he says, patting the spot again. Ford hesitates, but behind the laughter, the look on Stan’s face is warm, and Ford knows he’ll never be able to refuse it. Still, he stomps a little as he makes his way across the room and sits down more roughly than necessary. Stan keeps right on smiling. “Y’know, sometimes I forget how much we act like twins.”

Ford raises an eyebrow. “We _are_ twins.”

“But we _act_ like it,” Stan throws back. “Forty years apart, and we still do stuff like this.”

Ford blinks. But before he can ask what Stan means, Stan is reaching into his pocket and pulling something out. A piece of paper, crumpled up and close to falling apart. Stan unfolds it and holds it out without a word. Ford takes it, handling it like a butterfly that’s landed on the back of his hand.

There’s a lot of scribbled words in black, ballpoint pen, even more of them crossed out than legible, and it takes Ford a few seconds to make sense of it. But he’s been reading a lot of his brother’s handwriting over the past months, and bit by bit, the words start to click into place.

_Still likes vanilla cake?_

_Does he even LIKE cake?_

_Any nerd books he doesn’t already have?_

_Read science fiction?_

_Likes to draw—new sketchbook?_

_Take him out to find more anomalies? Any he hasn’t seen yet?_

_Ask the kids??_

There’s at least ten more after that, notes and ideas, crossed out or left with question marks. The paper itself is torn at the edges, like it’s been folded and unfolded and stuffed into a pocket countless times. Like it’s been revisited over and over again with new ideas, or with the knowledge that an old one won’t work.

For a supposed genius, it takes Ford an embarrassingly long time to connect the dots.

He blinks. He blinks again. Turning his head feels like moving a boulder, but he still manages it, and finds Stan staring down at his knees, his face unreadable.

“You’ve been …?”

Stan won’t look at him, but Ford can still see the faint pink tint on his cheeks.

“The Stan O’War was our dream when we were kids. And we’re out there now, livin’ it, just like we thought we would. Better, probably,” Stan says, so solemn that it doesn’t feel like the same man cracking up only a few minutes ago. “But we’re not kids, Ford. And you’re not that nerdy teenager I remember. You could barely last a minute in the ring then and now I see you take down stuff three times your size. You’re not half as gullible, either. Still a huge nerd with weird taste in clothes, though.”

He glances up long enough to flash a half-smile. Ford returns it, shaking and awkward, but no less genuine.

“Just like you’re still a knucklehead who wouldn’t know a vegetable if it smacked him in the face.”

Stan snorts, but doesn’t argue. He’s probably proud of it, the big idiot.

And as much as he worries about his health, Ford wouldn’t have him any other way.

“Point is, we’re not … the same people anymore,” Stan goes on, but keeps glancing at Ford out of the corner of his eye, even though it looks like he has to force himself to do so. “We don’t like the same stuff. So all the birthday junk we did when we were kids … doesn’t really apply anymore.”

Ford lets out a long, heavy breath. “Yeah.”

They sit there for a long second, staring at the floor in front of them. Ford looks up first, and a second later, Stan meets his eyes. They stare at each other. No silent conversation. No looks that say more than words. They just sit there, eyes locked.

Then, in perfect synchrony, they break out laughing.

Ford isn’t even sure what they’re laughing about at first. It’s contagious, it’s warm, it’s familiar, and it’s the most comfortable thing he’s felt in days. But after ten seconds pass, twenty, thirty, Ford’s brain starts to catch up, and he notices the stress leaking out of him like water flooding down a drain.

He’s been so worried about this. And so has Stan. They’ve been worrying about each other, worrying about failing, and all they had to do to solve it was _talk_.

But somehow, that’s still the hardest thing in the world.

And maybe that should be sad. Maybe it is. But it just makes Ford laugh harder.

It’s sad, but there’s relief behind it. Relief that this time, they found the solution quickly. This time, they talked it out before it exploded in their faces. This time, there’s no need for sacrifices or end of the worlds or even long days of awkward silence just because they can’t communicate.

It isn’t a lot of improvement, but it’s some. For two stubborn old men, it’s pretty good.

“I thought I had to make it some grand surprise,” Ford goes on once they finally calm down, shaking his head and letting a few last chuckles slip out. “That … it wouldn’t be as meaningful if I had to ask what you wanted.”

Stan is still catching his breath, but the smile he gives him is soft, and a little sad.

“Yeah. Me too.”

Silence hangs for a few seconds, but it isn’t as uncomfortable as before. There’s a camaraderie behind the lingering awkwardness, and Ford hangs onto that even though so much else is still up in the air.

“But I guess knowing the kids are planning a surprise party doesn’t make it mean any less special,” Stan adds, glancing away again and shrugging one shoulder. “Even if we aren’t them.”

Ford’s smile tugs a little wider.

“Maybe we should be more like them. They still seem to be doing a lot better than we are.”

Stan turns back to him, smiling again. He raises an eyebrow. “You think they still have to ask each other what they want for their birthday?”

“Probably not. But they’ve gotten to share all their birthdays so far,” Ford says, without nearly as much bitterness in his voice as he would have expected. He nods without really knowing what he’s nodding to. “We have time to figure things out.”

Stan makes a face. “Eh, maybe a couple of years.”

“Stanley …”

Stan smirks and gives him a quick punch in the arm.

“Oh, c’mon, you know I’m joking,” he says, and even though there’s a laugh in his voice, Ford can hear the sincerity behind it. A few seconds later, his face softens. “Not gonna promise to live forever, but … I don’t wanna give this up anytime soon.”

Ford presses his lips together, but can’t stop himself from smiling. “Me neither.”

There’s no living forever—not in this dimension, and certainly not in any way he’s willing to try. Those lost forty years are never going to come back, and one day one of them—or maybe both of them at the same time—will be dying, and they’ll know that no matter how much time they shared together, they could have shared more.

Ford will always regret that, no matter how many times Stan tells him he forgives him, no matter how many times he says that Bill was responsible for at least some of that lost time. But regret isn’t going to make their lives better. He already regrets what he did. He regrets it, and now he’s going to do everything he can to do better from now on.

And that’s all they can do.

No grand gestures. No trying to stuff so many good things into such a short amount of time that you choke on them.

Just living their lives and being happy.

Ford sits up straighter, turns back to Stan, and tilts his head, his smile a little wider.

“So … what _is_ your favorite flavor of cake?”

Stan huffs a laugh. But then he smiles and shakes his head, giving Ford an amused but fond look out of the corner of his eye.

“Vanilla. Chocolate frosting.”

Ford’s eyebrows go up. Stan shrugs.

“S’not like I don’t _like_ chocolate, just … not really up to the double chocolate anymore.”

That … makes a lot of sense, actually, and Ford somehow feels a little better at how wrong he had been about his brother’s favorite cake flavor. “Mm.”

“What’s yours?” Stan asks.

“Banana cake with peanut butter frosting.”

Stan blinks. Blinks again. And again.

“… Ford, that’s disgusting.”

“It’s delicious!” Ford throws back, even though he’s fighting a smile.

Stan wrinkles his nose. “I am _not_ eating that.”

“You don’t have to. It’s my cake!”

Stan starts to say something, then pauses. “Wouldn’t we share one? Or do that one layer each flavor thing Ma did?”

Ford frowns. Right. That was how they always did it growing up. A two-layered cake, one layer of each of their favorite flavors. Neither of them had ever hated each other’s favorite back then, though, so it didn’t matter that they couldn’t cut a piece without getting both.

“Well … maybe we could do half the other way,” he says after a while. “If we make our own cake next time. Two layers of half a cake. I’m sure there are cake pans that could do that.”

Stan snorts. “If there aren’t, you could make one. Probably get Mabel to help you, too.”

Ford smiles, but it’s fond rather than amused. He wouldn’t put anything past Mabel’s abilities at this point, at least when it comes to baking.

“Do you think they’ll make us a cake?” he asks.

Stan rolls his eyes, like the question is too obvious to really consider. “You think they’d throw a party _without_ one?”

Ford smiles a little wider.

“Do you think they’ll guess the right flavors?”

Stan gives him one of those conspiring looks they’ve shared more and more over the past year. Still not as much as they did as kids, but more all the time. And that’s good enough for now.

“Wouldn’t put it past Soos to have noticed mine after all these years, but I doubt he’ll guess yours,” Stan says. “And if Mabel helps—”

“If?”

Another snort. “Heh, good point. It’ll definitely have twice as much sugar as usual.”

At least.

“I assume you’ll eat it anyway,” Ford says. A statement, not a question.

Stan grins. “Complaining every bite. Can’t have those punks thinking I’m going soft.”

Ford huffs a laugh. “I think you’ve long past that point, Stanley.”

Stan shoves his shoulder. “Oh, shut your face, Poindexter!”

Ford shoves him back, grinning from ear to ear. “Only if you shut yours!”

They push each other a few more times, until they’re both laughing so hard they risk falling off the bed. And even when they settle down, they keep chuckling for a good minute, hands on each other’s shoulders, struggling to catch their breaths. Their eyes meet, and past the laughter, something softens in both of them. Something so familiar it goes further back than any of their memories. That connection they already had from the moment they were born.

Finally, Ford straightens himself, but keeps his hand firm on his brother’s shoulder. Right where it belongs.

“What else were you thinking for our birthday?”

*

_“Surprise!”_

Ford isn’t anywhere close to as good a liar as his brother, but after thirty years of being chased around the multiverse, he’s not quite as bad as he used to be. And he can’t help but feel proud when he gapes and stumbles and stares at the living room decorated with balloons and streamers and a dozen other colorful items like it’s the most shocking thing he’s ever seen.

Stan still fakes it better than him.

The surprise is all they have to fake, though. Even though they knew exactly what was coming, it doesn’t take away from the joy of seeing people they love go through so much effort to celebrate their birthday.

Stan was right, of course. Everyone is here. Dipper and Mabel were a given, and Ford really shouldn’t have been surprised that Soos and Melody are involved in planning a party in their own house. Wendy doesn’t work here anymore, not even as a summer job, and this is only the second time she’s been to the Shack since Ford arrived, but here she is, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, Dipper’s old pine tree hat sitting sideways on her head.

Even Soos’s grandmother is here, sitting in her favorite armchair—apparently brought over from her old house—and watching them all with a fond smile. She’s still as can be now, but Ford is sure that she had a part in planning things. The fact that she raised someone like Soos is proof enough of what kind of person she is.

Yes, Ford is definitely going to try harder to get to know her before they head out in a few months.

But for now, he just appreciates the party: chaotic and loud and perfectly matched to the Pines family. There is, of course, a cake—and cupcakes—and no, none of them are in Ford’s or Stan’s favorite flavors, but Ford still eats far more of each than he ever does of desserts nowadays. Stan eats two cupcakes and a slice and a half of cake before he collapses in his old chair, the rest of his second slice of cake still in hand.

He stays that way even as the presents are passed out and opened. There are … a lot of them, far more than they ever got as kids, and Ford can barely keep track of everything he receives. A new collection of knitted apparel from Mabel, a set of fancy ink pens from Dipper, a rather expensive microscope from Soos, Melody and Wendy combined, and a book called _How to Boil Water_ from Soos’s grandmother.

She doesn’t say anything when he opens it, but he looks at her, and she looks at him, and he’s hit with a horrifying moment of fear that he didn’t scrub the chocolate cake batter off the kitchen walls quite well enough.

Stan’s pile of gifts is bigger, probably because he didn’t receive a microscope that is _definitely_ more than one person should be spending—and maybe because he’s had enough time to get to know these people better. But Ford doesn’t mind. He has time. They all do.

And the gifts are lovely. They’re thoughtful and generous and, in one case, slightly unsettling. But he would have been fine without them.

The cake is delicious—a little too sweet, but delicious—but he wouldn’t have minded if no one had time to make it.

Stan and he talked over everything they could possibly do for their birthday. Everything they did as kids, everything they saw other kids get to do, everything they wished for but never got. And for once, without any hesitation or argument, both of them had agreed: what they wanted most was to enjoy their family—by blood or not—and spend time with each other.

It wasn’t the sort of thing they ever thought about as kids, but now that they’re older, it’s easy to look back and see that that’s what made all the difference. Not the party. Not the presents. Not the cake. Not anything their dad deemed worthy to spend money on or what their mom pulled out of a recipe book.

They loved the cake because their mom spent time and effort making it for them.

They loved that nameless game because their big brother invented it for them.

Even the TV show was just a way for Stan to stay close to Ford when they were doing different things.

That’s what they loved the most. That’s what they’ve missed out on. And that’s what they finally have again now, forty years later.

That’s what they’re going to make sure they have until the day they die.

After all the presents have been opened and the cake half-eaten, Ford slips back down to their room and comes back with a wrapped gift tucked under his arm. He genuinely considered waiting until later to bring it out, until the party is done and no one else is around to witness his sentimentality, but really, he’s spent far too much time trying to hide his emotions. It’s about time he was open about them.

Even if it gets him teased.

Besides, when he thinks about it, the only one teasing him will be Stan, and he’ll find out either way.

Still, it takes thirty seconds of steeling himself before he crosses the room to where Stan is still sitting in his chair. Everyone else is occupied—sitting in front of the laptop, apparently, watching what Ford is almost certain sounds like _The Slightly Strange Adventures of Billy James_ —so no one sees Ford shove down the last of his nervousness and come to stand in front of his brother.

“Stanley?”

“Mm?” Stan asks, looking up from his nearly-finished slice of cake.

Ford rubs his neck with his free hand.

“I know we said we weren’t doing anything surprising, but …” He holds out the gift and forces himself to meet Stan’s eyes. “Happy birthday.”

He isn’t sure whether to be satisfied or ashamed when Stan actually looks surprised. He stares at the gift for a few seconds, lips barely parted, eyes wide, before he turns his gaze to Ford and huffs with a shake of his head.

“Sap,” he mutters. But instead of reaching to take it, he sets the cake on the floor, bends over, sticks his arm underneath the chair, and pulls out a box of his own. Or, something shaped like a box. Rectangular, bigger than Ford’s, and heavy, by the way he holds it. He takes it in both hands and holds it out, eyes locked on a random spot across the room instead of Ford’s eyes. “Here.”

Ford is sure his face looks just as surprised as Stan’s did. He takes the box as carefully as he can manage, holding it like he might hold some fragile, prone-to-explode artifact from another dimension—though this is far more precious. Stan rolls his eyes, but Ford can see him fighting back a smile, and he has no way of hiding the pink tint to his cheeks.

Then Stan nods toward the gift in Ford’s hands.

“You gotta open yours first,” he grumbles, never meeting Ford’s eyes for more than a second at a time. “Wasn’t easy to put together, so you better appreciate it.”

He points a threatening finger at him, but there’s no real force behind it. It’s the same thing he always does when he’s insecure about something and wants to put up a defense, like it’s going to stop someone from telling him what a bad job he did.

Like he still thinks Ford would say that to him.

That … stings a little, but Ford knows that trust is earned, often over a long time, and some subconscious little habits are going to take years to break.

He smiles anyway and balances the present in the crook of one arm so he can unwrap it with the opposite hand. The wrapping is more elegant than he would have expected, but Stan has proven that he has a knack for things like this, able to put something together from all kinds of junk when they needed it. His skills aren’t as technical as Ford’s, but he’s much better with cars and engines than Ford will ever be, and Ford will never forget the flustered look on his face when he walked in on him patching up their clothes with a needle and thread.

Ford might have teased him for that once, but not anymore. And only partially because Mabel has been drilling it into his head that sewing “isn’t just for girls.”

At first, he tries to be careful with the wrapping, not wanting to add to the mess that’s already on the floor, but once he gets a look at what’s inside, he lets the paper fall straight to the floor. And before he knows it, he’s holding his gift in both hands, thick and beautifully bound, with a sturdy, expensive-looking cover.

It’s … an album.

At first glance, Ford thinks Stan worked on this with Mabel, but within seconds, he can tell it’s nothing like Mabel’s scrapbooks. There isn’t any glitter, for one, or stickers or bright colors. The cover is the same crimson as Ford’s favorite sweaters, and the title is printed in slightly shaky gold paint.

It reads _The Pines Twins._

Ford’s expression melts, and a lump forms in his throat. Right. The photos. Of _course_ that was what Stan was doing that day, when this whole situation first came to light. How Ford didn’t think of it from the beginning is some kind of miracle—or perhaps just another example of him being too lost in his own thoughts to notice the obvious.

He can feel Stan watching him, but he doesn’t give him the pleasure of meeting his eyes. He can see enough of his face anyway.

Ford takes a deep breath, preparing himself for another trip down memory lane, and opens the cover to the first page, where a single photo sits right in the center.

But it’s not him and Stan.

The photo isn’t faded and yellowed at the edges, like almost all the photos from their childhood. It isn’t brand new, but Ford can tell it’s only maybe a decade old.

Or, to be more specific, almost fourteen years old.

A younger Stanley stands in the center of the photo, holding two blanket-wrapped bundles, their tiny heads resting in the crooks of his elbows. One with familiar rosy cheeks, and the other with an impossible to miss birthmark on his forehead.

Ford forgets how to breathe. He can’t move. He can’t think. He just sits there and stares at two precious little babies in the picture. Babies he’s never seen. Babies he’s never held. Babies who lived almost thirteen years before he met them.

Then he lifts his hand and turns the page.

And more photos stare back at him.

The kids as toddlers, playing with a pile of toys on the floor. A little Mabel with at least twenty different bows in her hair, putting two more bows in Dipper’s. The kids on their first day of school, Mabel beaming, Dipper clinging to her hand.

The kids’ school photos, both of their hair partially shaved off.

The kids celebrating Hanukkah when they were eight.

Dipper building a project for his own science fair. Mabel knitting her first sweater.

After what must be the twentieth page, Ford tries to turn it again, but his hand trembles too hard to manage it. It hovers just over the page, as he finally lifts his head to stare at Stan.

Stan looks away.

“I know there’s … no way to make up for all that lost time,” he starts, eyes locked on a random spot on the wall. “Hell, I wasn’t even there for most of these. But their parents didn’t mind sending copies of the best good ones and, well … s’not that hard to stick ‘em on the pages. Sorry they’re not all organized.”

He clears his throat and looks to the other side, glancing at Ford for a split second on the way, just long enough to catch his expression. He ducks his head, his whole face going red, his eyes old and sad.

“You deserve to see how they grew up.”

Silence hangs. Stan fidgets. And Ford stands there, staring at him, feeling the thick, sturdy book in his hands, filled with the most precious images in the multiverse.

He doesn’t notice the tears in his eyes until they start slipping down his cheeks.

He doesn’t sob. There isn’t much that can make him do that nowadays, though this comes closer than most. The tears don’t even last very long. He wipes them away and sniffs just once before looking down at the pages again.

He wants to look through the whole thing now. He wants to spend hours pouring over it like Stan with Mabel’s scrapbook. Like the two of them with their old home videos.

But there’s something more important to do first.

He sucks in a deep breath and, using all his willpower, closes the book and sets it down on the T-rex head still serving as a coffee table. He swallows the lump in his throat and gives Stan a nod.

“You need to open your present now.”

Stan huffs, shaking his head.

“Oh, c’mon,” he mutters, even as he looks down at the wrapped gift still sitting in his lap. “You know you didn’t need to get me anything.”

Ford puts all the incredulity he can manage into a single raised eyebrow.

“You really think you could get away with getting me a gift and not get one in return?”

Stan doesn’t answer.

He won’t meet Ford’s eyes as he opens the gift—with far more care than Ford has come to expect. He still lets the paper fall to the floor, and once he unwraps a good two-thirds of it, he stops, apparently recognizing what’s underneath. Ford didn’t bother to put it in a box.

There didn’t seem to be a point in finding a box for a piece of mostly-rotted wood.

Stan pauses, then takes off the last of the paper and lets it fall to the ground, like he thinks that there’s some sort of explanation on the rest of the wood. But no. It’s just a piece of wood. Old and water-damaged and barely holding together. If Stan grips it too hard, it will probably fall apart.

Ford clears his throat, and Stan finally meets his eyes, just as Ford drops his own gaze to the floor.

“There … wasn’t much left of it,” he says, and it feels like such a poor excuse, even though he knows it’s the best he can do at this point. Even though he knows Stan would tell him it isn’t worth blaming himself. “It sunk years ago, of course, and most of it rotted away, but …”

In the corner of Ford’s eye, Stan blinks. He looks at the wood. Back to Ford. Back to the wood again.

“Ford … this isn’t …?”

He trails off, and his next breath trembles so hard it’s almost concerning. Ford risks a glance back to him, just in time to see Stan’s eyes getting wider and wider, his mouth open and working around words he can’t seem to find. He swallows, then shakes his head.

“How did you … we haven’t even _been_ to Jersey!”

Ford huffs a laugh and shrugs.

“I have contacts. Or, rather, I have contacts who have contacts.” He shifts his weight from foot to foot. “I … called in a favor, and one of them was willing to do a bit of digging. Or a lot of digging.”

His lips twitch up at the corners, but it feels too bittersweet to be a smile.

“They found the remains near the beach and, after verifying they were what they appeared to be, they … sent me the most intact piece.”

Silence. Stan is still staring at the plank of wood, holding it like he’s afraid he’s going to break it. Ford clears his throat.

“I know it’s … it’s not the same, and it doesn’t make up for … I know it doesn’t fix anything, but I thought … if you wanted … we could take that with us, and it would be a way to … carry a piece of the past. Metaphorically. Or literally.”

He starts to clear his throat again, but stops himself. He sounds awkward enough already.

He locks his eyes on his feet for a few seconds, waiting, but Stan doesn’t respond. It takes all his willpower, but he pulls his gaze up and searches his brother’s face.

And finds tears dripping off his jaw and onto his hands.

Ford’s throat closes up.

“Stanley?” he breathes, reaching out a hand, unsure what to do with it. “Are you …?”

He doesn’t know what he’s going to say, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t get the chance.

Stan pushes himself to his feet, sets the piece of wood on the chair as gently as he can, then steps forward and yanks Ford into a crushing hug.

It’s hardly their first hug since Ford came back through the portal. Ford never really tried to count them, at least after the first three or four, and even if he had, he would have long lost track by now. They aren’t as openly affectionate as the kids—their upbringing makes that difficult—but it’s gotten easier, and the desire to make up for lost time, to give and receive what they’ve both missed out on, outweighs the echo of their father’s disapproving voice in their heads.

But there’s something warmer about this one that Ford hasn’t felt in a long time. Maybe it’s been months, maybe it’s been decades—he’ll never know for sure. All he knows is that Stan is squeezing him so tight it’s almost painful, and he doesn’t even have to think before he’s squeezing him back just as hard.

It’s the most natural thing in the world.

Both of them. Right here. Right now.

Together.

Like they should have been all this time.

Like they will be from now on, for as long as they can.

Ford lifts his head just enough to see over Stan’s shoulder and locks eyes with the six pairs watching him, the laptop pushed off to the side. Dipper and Mabel right up front, of course, Dipper’s smile soft and Mabel’s so wide it looks like it’s going to split her face in two. Wendy and Melody watch them with an odd fondness, and Soos, of course, is crying, hand to his mouth, smile beaming wide enough to rival Mabel’s. Even his grandmother, sitting in her armchair, looks at them with more silent knowing than Ford can explain.

He expects it to be embarrassing, but it’s not. There’s no judgment. No eye-rolling or laughs about him being a sentimental fool.

These are his friends. His family. People who care about him, whether he’s an eccentric scientist or a sappy old man.

People who welcomed him even when he barged into their lives and did so little to earn a place there.

He doesn’t know how many birthdays he has left. He doesn’t know where life will take him or Stan or any of the other people in this room. There will always be forty years that he didn’t get to spend with any of them. Forty years he missed out on because of his mistakes and others’.

But he’s here now.

He’s here, and Stan’s here, and they’re surrounded by people who love them.

And each other.

They have their brother. Their twin.

And even if that’s all they have for every birthday going forward … it will be more than enough.

Ford smiles and squeezes Stan even tighter, feeling him warm and solid and alive in his arms. Right here. Right now.

Yes. This is all he’ll ever need.


End file.
